Ex-Hubbard mayor Keenan gets at least 10 years in child rape case

WARREN — Richard Keenan 66, former Hubbard mayor, will spend at least the next 10 years in prison for raping a girl starting when she was 4 and continuing for three years until last June, when the allegations surfaced.

He pleaded guilty last month to eight counts of rape, four counts of attempted rape and eight counts of gross sexual imposition, all involving the same child.

His agreed upon plea agreement called for him to to to prison for life with parole eligibility after 10 years.

Keenan, of Moore Street in Hubbard, has been in the Trumbull County jail awaiting sentencing since his bond was revoked March 20, three days after he pleaded guilty to the offenses.

The reason for waiting to sentence him was that Keenan and his attorney, J. Gerald Ingram, asked for the county adult probation department to conduct an investigation of Keenan’s background and history so that Judge Peter Kontos would have that before passing sentence.

Keenan served as Hubbard mayor in 2010 and 2011 and served on Hubbard City Council in the early 1990s and again in the late 1990s. He also worked as a probation officer in Girard Municipal court in the mid-1990s, according to Vindicator files.

Prosecutors said Keenan admitted to committing the crimes to his wife, a pastor, a social worker and his brother and sister-in-law.

A filing in the case states that when Keenan’s wife, Diana, heard about the assaults from the child, “upon confronting [her husband] about the allegations, [Keenan] responded, ‘I did it.’”

The filing states Keenan also admitted sexual abuse during “group discussions” while he was in the ValleyCare Trumbull Memorial Hospital psychiatric ward.

It says that after Keenan voluntarily admitted himself into a Warren psychiatric facility after his release from Trumbull Memorial, he told a social worker “he was feeling suicidal because he had been molesting the child victim for approximately the past two years.”